Outdoor Play Area: Part Four - Tout Finis!

t

Before and After !
Click image to enlarge.

Ta Da!

Here is the before and after of the child folk's outdoor play area.

What began as a wild and enticingly dangerous corner of our garden with an open window well etc ... has finally become rock soup and worm rescue HQ!

I really had my heart set on making some kind of flowing canopy/tent top to the kitchen, but in the end decided to top it with wood and shingles. Only some of the miles of bunting I made was used to trim the top.

I purchased four colors of oilcloth, stitched them together and stapled them under the kitchen top both in the front and in the back. Besides looking mighty cute, they keep the rain out of the storage space.

I used the same oilcloth to make reversible cushions for the wee benches.

The chalkboard is simply a stretched canvas painted with chalkboard paint. Mr. K had an extra canvas stretcher and I covered it with an end scrap of oilcloth and drilled it into the top of the chalkboard to keep some of the rain off.

The child folk painted the art on the wall and I used some varathane to coat them.

The burners are simply drink coasters purchased at Ikea along with the other kitchen accessories.

The best part of the play space is that it gets used rain or shine. So far it has been a restaurant, a castle, a dungeon, a ramen street stand, a space ship, a school, and a home for poor souls captured by the evil dragon and forced to live on Virginia creeper leaves and pebble stew.

When it gets muddy, I hose it down.

Summer fun!

You can see the entire process here: part one, part two, part three .

Thank you for stopping by.

Outdoor Play Area - Part Three

i
Here is the play area as it appears right now.

I sanded the kitchen area to remove the finish on the rustic bookshelf it once was. To keep costs down I used a can of stain that I had from a previous furniture refinishing job. The colour turned out quite nice. Next came the varathane. I used a clear outdoor deck and furniture varathane - the label said 'odourless' and it was surprisingly odour free (from my experience a lot of scent- free claims are just that).

I applied the four coat recommendation of varathane as this structure will be left outside. It was then screwed down to the garden wall for safety reasons.





Mr. K jumped in and built two little benches.

The first fits over the window well and pretty much covers the window entirely. The window is in our tiny furnace room so the loss of natural light was never a problem.





The second little seat is a box that fits over the root base of our virginia creeper.

I sanded, stained, and varathaned both of the little seats. You'll notice that they turned out much darker than the kitchen. This is due to the fact that the seats are made from pressure treated wood that we had lying around from our porch and fence build a few years ago. Normally this inconsistency would drive me bonkers, but it surprisingly doesn't bother me.

Once everything was put in its right place, I packed pebble stones into the remaining spaces. I am certain these will need replacing throughout the spring and summer as the child folk use them for soups and magic potions!!!!

The only thing left to do is decorate - my favorite part!

Stay tuned for the final chapter.

Thank you for stopping by.

Outdoor Play Area - Part Two

i
In my search for inspiration for the child folk's outdoor play area, you may recall that I stumbled across this. All of these adorable little kitchens were hand made and I knew that they were well within my tool-handling capabilities.


Unlike the inspirational kitchens, however, I didn't want to spend a lot of money on the supplies. I found a rustic, solid wood, sturdy, handmade bookshelf on Craigslist for $15. When I went to see it, the seller dropped the price down to $10. Sold! Since this kitchen will be left outside, it was important that the bookshelf be solid wood.





The shelf was measured and cut down to desired size.





A stainless steal mixing bowl (from my kitchen) was then traced in position for a sink. To cut our the circle a drill was first used to make a hole big enough to insert the skill saw in order to cut out the entire piece.




You will notice that the corners of the bookshelf have notches cut out of them. I purchased 2"x2" pieces of wood that will be drilled into the notches to fasten some type of curtain and/or awning. I am still undecided about what I want to put here - the bunting for sure, but what else?




Still to be done:
Sanding
Staining
Sealing
Decorating


Stay tuned for more.

Thank you for stopping by.

Child Folk Outdoor Play Area - Part One

i
When we moved into our house our yard was nothing but flagstones and a few plants in oddly placed areas in an otherwise empty garden beside out house. Over the last five years we have done a lot of work in the yard but left most of the odd plants where they were because, well - we had two kids in the meantime and very little money to spend on outdoor beautification.

Recently, little K has taken to climbing behind one of the odd plants into a weird little area of vine roots, dirt and a dangerous window well. Despite several scraped legs, she persists. It got me thinking that I never really liked the plant in the first place - which got me thinking that I should dig up the small 4'x4' area and make it kid friendly. That led me on an inspirational search for what to put in that area.

We already have a heavy duty plastic climber found on craigslist several years ago so I knew I didn't want anything else big and plastic, especially an outdoor house. I'm of the mindset that if you give children everything they think they want two things occur - the first is that they don't want it anymore, and the second is the destruction of the creative process that got them to wanting it in the first place.

So what to do? I wanted to build an area that is open to interpretation and imagination and let the child folk be themselves in all their wonderful silliness. I also wanted a space that could be left outside to be weathered and worn and could get dirty too. I envisioned a little outdoor kitchen/ice cream stand/ shop/laboratory -essentially a space that offers the bones of play so that the young ones could fill in the rest. Oh and of course it has to be cheap, cheap, cheap too!
Too much to ask?

Here is the space in its original state - note the gas meter, virginia creeper roots that we want to keep, the window well and the pipes!

It took me forever to dig up the plant as I wanted to save the roots so that my neighbours could replant it.

Leveling the soil.

We purchased outdoor wood tiles from Ikea to use as a makeshift floor that would allow for water drainage. They can be cut into smaller tiles for little spaces and screwed together for stability.

Stay tuned for Part Two - kitchen design.

Thanks for stopping by.